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Contested Vocabulary in Game Studies
Original Post: February 23 2011 I want to take a moment to pour over the semantics of a few important terms/concepts often used in the context of videogame studies. These terms are fundamental to our study, but are in my opinion, abused. That is to say they are either given new or limited definitions, or…
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The Metanarrative of Videogames Part 1 & 2
Original Post: November 15, 2010 Part 1 Videogames teach their players things: at the least how the internal system of the videogame works. This is a central principle on which Raph Koster’s theory of fun and Ian Bogost’s procedural rhetoric are both built on. Murray’s conceptions of agency and immersion rely on this fact in…
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Unpacking Mechanics and Meaning in FarCry 2
Original Post: November 1 2010 The following is an unpolished ‘critique’ of FarCry 2 in which I attempt to extract meaning from the combination of very strong, though sometimes hard to believe mechanics, with what narrative/aesthetic information is available. This will assume a lot of knowledge about FC2, and doesn’t provide any kind of introduction…
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The Great Undiscovered of Minecraft
Original Post: October 26, 2010 I have to admit, I am not much of an indie gamer. I spend most of my time with the big-budget mainstream titles in my research. There is a reason for that, but it isn’t the point of this article. What is important is that Minecraft managed to get my…
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Attempting to Appreciate Gears of War
Original Post: August 24, 2010 Where to begin with Gears of War? Yes, its a big-budget, AAA console action type game, which are meant to be just the kind of thing I’m mostly focused on, but I have only just played through it. Having played it now, I feel only slightly more inspired to write…
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Something About Starcraft
Original Post: August 2, 2010 To jump on a hyped-up bandwagon: StarCraft. That long-awaited sequel to a game I did actually play, rather religiously, back when it was current. I can’t say that I was among those eagerly awaiting its return, but it is a bit like an old friend you haven’t seen in a…
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Red Dead Reflections
Original Post: June 11, 2010 Yes, I’ve been waiting weeks to use that title. I actually had a very brief review of this game published at Kotaku so check it out there. What we have here will be a longer version with more elaborations than the 500 words allowed me there. Read Dead Redemption is…
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Drama ex Machina: The Desperation Meter
Original Post: April 11, 2010 This post is a speculative solution to a problem I noticed in Assassin’s Creed, both I and II, but could equally be used in other vaguely similar games. Firstly, let me outline the problem as I see it, and then describe my mechanical solution. I loved both Assassin’s Creed games,…
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